


i am invincible/as long as i'm alive

by aceface



Category: Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 20:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21840217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceface/pseuds/aceface
Summary: It’s their ten year high school reunion, and Ferris isn’t there.-“Where is he?” Cameron asks, like he can’t help himself even after all that, and Sloane leans forward a little further.She’s already given twenty different answers to that question and half of them are true: he’s on tour with a band, standing in for their lead singer; he’s travelling around Europe with an heiress he met in France; he’s at Princess Diana’s funeral. None of them seem right for Cameron, not even the truth.“Here’s the thing,” she says. “There are going to be a million people who only want to talk to me about Ferris tonight. Are you sure you want to be one of them?”Cameron taps a finger on his chin like he’s taking it seriously, like he’s really thinking about it, and then he grins at her. Sloane’s breath catches a little; there’s something about the way Cameron gives you his full attention that manages to be intense and a little intimidating.“No,” he says. “I absolutely don’t.”
Relationships: Ferris Bueller/Cameron Frye/Sloane Peterson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 227
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	i am invincible/as long as i'm alive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Minim Calibre (minim_calibre)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minim_calibre/gifts).



The gym is loud and even so, Sloane can still hear the squeaks of people’s shoes on the floor over the music.

She always thought that high school reunions were cliché but now that she’s here, she’s already enjoying herself. There’s something about the nostalgia of it all that lends her a sense of self-awareness, like she’s sitting outside of herself and looking around at everyone else - the former band geeks, the cheerleaders, the football players, all here ten years later.

Sloane isn’t planning on staying very long - it’s technically not her ten year reunion, after all - but then there’s a squeal of plastic against plastic as someone pulls out the chair beside her and flops into it, exhaling loudly.

“This is weird,” Cameron says, with no preamble, and Sloane feels the corners of her lips quirk up.

“High school is weird,” she says.

“Yeah, and I thought we’d gotten out.” Cameron’s twitchy, his fingers tapping against his knee, totally out of time with the music. “And yet, here we are. It drags you back in every time.”

“You chose to come.”

“I don’t know why,” Cameron says, looking around now as if he expects his reason for coming to jump out of a cake and yell ‘surprise!’.

“Probably for the same reason I did,” Sloane says and leans forward to smile at him, the smile she’s just realised she’s been saving for him. “To prove that we exist independently of Ferris Bueller.”

“I didn’t realise - aren’t you still in touch with him?” Cameron stutters and Sloane resists the urge to reach out and touch his face, to prove to herself that he’s real, this version of Cameron that manages to be twenty seven and still seventeen to her, all at once.

“That doesn’t mean that I’m not still my own person,” Sloane says.

Cameron nods once, jerkily, like he’s acknowledging a hit scored. “I guess I’m just as bad as all the rest of them.”

“Hi,” Sloane says. She holds her hand out and waits for Cameron to shake it - he closes his hand around hers, cool and dry, with a surprisingly firm grip. “I’m Sloane Peterson.”

“Cameron Frye,” Cameron says. “Pleasure to meet you. Come here often?”

Sloane had forgotten how much she loved Cameron’s sense of humour; dry and subtle enough that sometimes other people wouldn’t be able to tell if he was joking.

“Oh, every ten years or so,” she says and Cameron smiles at her, the way he does when he’s trying to stop himself from smiling, and says, “Glad I caught you.”

-

After college, it had seemed like Sloane had to choose Cameron or Ferris, like she wasn’t allowed to have both anymore, the way she was used to.

College had been good for Cameron. He’d seemed like he was finally in the right place - his introspection and long silences had been appealing to people, his thoughtfulness something to be valued instead of fought against. Sloane had been worried that maybe he’d get too comfortable in his comfort zone without Ferris, that maybe he would never leave his room - but she hadn’t needed to worry, and in all honesty, it had been enough for her to worry about herself during that first year.

She loved them both, but it wasn’t like she was their _mom_.

But Ferris hadn’t taken to it as naturally. It had seemed like it was a thing he was determined to get through: he was stuck in one place, and he had deadlines to meet. It was unnatural in a way, when she visited, to see Ferris holed up in his room and writing frantically.

Sloane had thought he would join a secret society, or start one; that he would be in a war against some frats and winning; that he would have a gaggle of girls swooning outside of his window and asking for Ferris Bueller to notice them just once.

“Don’t you have adventures anymore?” Sloane asked and Ferris leaned back, tipping his chair onto two legs and grinning at her upside down.

“You’ve got to put the work in for the best adventures,” he said. “I could leave now and there would be things I could do. But if I get this done first, there are so many more things I can do.”

“Life moves fast,” Sloane said, not sure what his point was, and Ferris pushed himself upright again.

“And I don’t want to miss out,” he said. “That’s what this is for.”

She doesn’t know what his degree was in, and he’s never told her. Sloane herself had started off undeclared, as it frightened her, and that was a good thing sometimes. Ferris had been the source of all unpredictability in her life and without him, she didn’t want to let her life carry her along familiar lines. It would have been so easy to let it.

Besides, she still wasn’t interested in anything, really - at least nothing that could be found at college.

She doesn’t know what his job is, but he _has_ told her that - it just doesn’t stick, slides off her every time he tries to explain it. It’s definitely something that involves a lot of travel, and he doesn’t have to wear a suit but he does dress smart - patterned shirts, and off-colour jackets and pants. Sloane has always liked the way that Ferris dresses, and she likes it just as much now - likes that his outside reflects his inside, that he stands out in a uniquely Ferris way.

He doesn’t need the clothes to do that. But she likes seeing him looking sharp.

So Sloane supposes that she chose Ferris, after all; chose late-night study sessions and making out in the stacks; chose cramped dive bars where the owner lets Ferris sing karaoke with the jukebox; chose the possibility of more and traded the adventures with him that she knew they could have, if he let himself.

She hadn’t been wrong about him. Sloane knows Ferris the same way she knew Cameron; down to his bones and more besides, the thing inside him that makes him him. Even if Ferris dressed like everybody else, and looked like everybody else, Sloane would be able to pick him out of a line-up every time.

Something inside her sings to something inside him.

But she’d missed Cameron, and she knew that Ferris had too. After all - she’s here, isn’t she?

-

Sloane knows what her next lines should be. She’s supposed to ask if Cameron is out of touch with Ferris, even though she knows that he is and he isn’t. He _thinks_ he is, but she knows that Ferris knows where he is, and has his phone number stashed away somewhere, like he’s just waiting for the next time that they’re both in town.

“Where is he?” Cameron asks, like he can’t help himself even after all that, and Sloane leans forward a little further.

She’s already given twenty different answers to that question and half of them are true: he’s on tour with a band, standing in for their lead singer; he’s travelling around Europe with an heiress he met in France; he’s at Princess Diana’s funeral. None of them seem right for Cameron, not even the truth.

“Here’s the thing,” she says. “There are going to be a million people who only want to talk to me about Ferris tonight. Are you sure you want to be one of them?”

Cameron taps a finger on his chin like he’s taking it seriously, like he’s _really_ thinking about it, and then he grins at her. Sloane’s breath catches a little; there’s something about the way Cameron gives you his full attention that manages to be intense and a little intimidating.

“No,” he says. “I absolutely don’t.”

“That’s the most decisive I think I’ve ever heard you,” Sloane says, startled into the truth, and Cameron’s grin widens.

His eyes really are very blue.

“Ten years,” he says. “It changes you.”

They’ve seen each other more recently than ten years, but Sloane knows that to both of them, the last time they ever really hung out was the summer before college.

“Hey,” Sloane says, before they can get hooked on the past. “Do you want to dance?”

“I forgot that you dance,” Cameron says, sounding surprised at himself. “I thought you’d be, you know. Too cool for that.”

Sloane smiles, slow and easy, and stands up. She touches Cameron’s shoulder to steady herself and leans in, her hair falling like a curtain between them and the rest of the room.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” she says. “I’m actually too cool to sit at the side of the room and watch everyone else.” She moves back, watches the way Cameron’s eyes follow her. “Kidding. But really, didn’t you learn anything from Ferris?”

“Nowhere near as much as I should have,” Cameron says ruefully, but he stands up as well, takes her hand when she holds it out to him.

It’s not a slow song, which Sloane is glad for - Cameron’s changed, but she still feels a little like she’s drawn a wary animal to eat from her hand by getting him on the dance floor; like he might startle and bolt at any minute.

They have until the end of the song to themselves, if Sloane ignores the looks and the whispers. She’s kind of an expert at that now - it was easier in high school, when she had Ferris Bueller tunnel vision, like anyone else’s looks could come close - and the whispers they had with each other - but Sloane is used to attention, so she tosses her hair over one shoulder and winds her arms around Cameron’s neck.

During the next song, a couple dance up closer and Sloane recognises one of them at least: Simone Adamley, who was one of _the_ biggest gossips Sloane thinks she’s ever met.

“Hi, Sloane,” Simone says, and Sloane is nice enough to say, “Hi, Simone.”

Cameron just looks between them, like he’s never seen Simone in his life.

“So what you are doing these days?” Simone says and Cameron glances at Sloane, like he’s accepting a dare from her, and then he says, “I’m the sausage king of Chicago.”

It’s so unexpected that a laugh escapes Sloane before she can stop it, and she puts up a hand to stifle it. Cameron smiles at her, like Simone isn’t even there.

“You want to get out of here?” he asks. “Go to a bar or something?”

Sloane smiles to herself. “I have a better idea.”

She slides the bottle of tequila just far enough out of her purse for Cameron to see it and watches the way his eyes go wide and round, like marbles.

“Bleachers?” she says and Cameron nods, emphasised, a sweep up and down.

“Bleachers.”

-

“I am so glad,” Cameron says, once they’re sat under the bleachers, back to back, sharing Cameron’s jacket spread on the dirt under them. “I am so glad that no one else can ask me about Ferris Bueller.”

“I heard,” Sloane says, “from my mom’s brother’s girlfriend’s sister that Ferris was here in disguise the whole time.”

Cameron takes a long pull from the bottle and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Sloane’s impressed, in spite of herself - there are probably a lot of germs on that thing.

“You know,” he says, “I’d believe it.”

“He’s not,” Sloane says. “At least, I don’t think he is. I’m pretty sure that he’d tell me.”

“‘Pretty sure’,” Cameron says and Sloane shrugs a shoulder. She reaches for the bottle, takes her own shot.

“I don’t want to know everything,” she says. “Otherwise what’s the point in being with Ferris?”

“So you two are - you’re still together?” Cameron says, fast and all at once, like he’s been waiting to ask. Something heats inside of Sloane. It could just be the tequila.

“Always,” she says. “Sometimes he’s here and sometimes he’s not but it’s still…” She searches for the right words, a little more difficult now through the haze of cheap alcohol. What, it’s a high school reunion - she wasn’t going to break out the _good_ stuff. “It’s still Ferris,” she says. “He’s going to marry me.”

“Honestly,” Cameron says. “I thought he already would have.”

They pass the bottle back and forth in a companionable silence for a little while, before Cameron says, ““Don’t you worry?”

His eyes are searching her face and Sloane feels herself start to pink under his gaze. She hasn’t blushed in years.

She doesn’t have to worry about Ferris, though.

“He’s only ever loved two people,” she says. “And I don’t think I need to worry about the other one.”

Cameron doesn’t ask. Sloane decides that she isn’t disappointed.

“He has a lot of friends, though,” Cameron says instead. “Doesn’t he?”

“Ferris has a lot of friends,” Sloane agrees. “But I think he already found his best friends. We’re not so easy to replace.”

“That must be sad,” Cameron says thoughtfully. “Meeting the best people in high school.”

Sloane smiles to herself. “Is it?”

Cameron shoots her a look that says _I know exactly what you're getting at_ , but he takes another sip of tequila instead, his hand wrapped around the neck of the bottle. It’s dark out and the football field lights aren’t on; his skin seems to glow a little bit in the moonlight, but that could just be the alcohol.

“It was hard, though, wasn’t it?” Cameron says. “Being friends with a force of nature like that.”

Sloane had never found it difficult, but that’s probably not what she should say here. She doesn’t want to lie to Cameron either, especially not now, when he’s looking at her like he’s ready to believe whatever comes out of her mouth, a little fuzzy and soft around the edges.

“It’s funny,” Sloane says. “Ferris had a lot of friends, but we were the only ones he chose. That means something, I think. He could’ve had anyone, really, but he only wanted us.”

“Right,” Cameron says, “but no one ever noticed us as long as we were with Ferris.” He pauses, takes another long draw before he hands the bottle back to Sloane. “Noticed _me_ ,” he clarifies, and the tips of his fingers brush Sloane’s over the bottle.

“Well,” Sloane says. “I noticed you. I chose you first.”

They’d lived next door to each other for a year when they were little, before high school, before Cameron’s dad made it rich and they moved out to the glass monstrosity that he’d bought, in part, as a museum - that’s what Sloane thinks, anyway.

She hadn’t needed a friend - she’d still been on good terms with her sister, then, before they hit highschool. But she’d seen this boy sat outside, looking for all the world like he had adult worries, and something about it had been so funny that Sloane had to walk over to him.

He’d been kind and thoughtful, even if he’d also been perpetually pessimistic even then, and Sloane had kept him by her side.

“I guess you did,” Cameron says and Sloane tips the bottle in his direction.

“Cheers.”

-

They move to the football field. The grass feels nice against Sloane’s skin; cool and a little damp, and she curls up on her side. Cameron’s spread-eagle on the grass next to her, staring up at the sky like he’s ready to find the meaning of life written in the stars. If anyone could do it, Sloane thinks, Cameron could.

“Dare,” Sloane says and Cameron shrugs a shoulder.

“There aren’t really any good dares, are there?”

“There are,” Sloane says. “But they’d probably all involve moving from the field.”

Cameron flaps a hand at her, to dismiss her. “Not worth it,” he decides. “It’s too comfortable here. Was it always this comfortable? I don’t think so.”

“I don’t think we spent much time out here ten years ago,” Sloane says, but she’s willing to concede that maybe the grass feels a little softer. “Truth, then.”

Cameron still won’t look at her.

“Why didn’t you come to visit me in college?”

“Oh,” Sloane says, before she means to. She didn’t realise that this was something he was thinking about - she’d thought that she knew Cameron pretty well, even after ten years. That he’d somehow just - know. “I did.”

“You didn’t,” Cameron says. “I mean, you did, but it wasn’t - you weren’t there. Not really.”

“I had a lot going on,” Sloane says, which is the truth. It wasn’t about Ferris. It was something that got to be about _her_. “Why didn’t you come visit _me_?”

“Ah-ah,” Cameron says. “Maybe I’ll choose dare.”

“Okay,” Sloane says. “Truth or dare?”

Cameron says, “Truth.”

“Never have I ever,” Sloane says, “had a crush on my best friend’s girlfriend.”

“That’s not the game we’re playing,” Cameron says, but he drinks anyway.

Sloane reaches out to his hand with her own; he curls his fingers around her.

“He loves you too,” she tells him. “We both do.”

“That’s enough, I think,” Cameron says quietly. “Without Ferris, I mean.”

Sloane squeezes his hand, and settles back into the grass to wait. Ferris is on his way over, he was just running late. They’re moving back to Chicago, but she hasn’t told Cameron that yet. 

She thinks they’ll tell him that together.


End file.
